Weather and Traffic

Longtime Ramsing house goes for $5.5M

North End homeowners buy 232 Emerald Lane.

The estate of the late horse-breeder Annette Reynolds Ramsing has sold her longtime North End home at 232 Emerald Lane to Palm Beachers Donna R. and Charles G. “Chuck” Ward.

The property changed hands for $5.5 million, according to the courthouse records. Brown Harris Stevens agents Johanna S. Kendall and Anne H. Hamilton had co-listed it in July at $6.5 million. Broker Linda Olsson of Linda R. Olsson Inc. Realtor represented the Wards.

Built in 1947, the six-bedroom house was the longtime home of Ramsing, who died in August at 93, and her late husband, banker and developer Byron L. Ramsing Sr. They were married 58 years before his death in 2002.

With nearly 14,000 total square feet, the house stands on an oversize lot measuring seven-tenths of an acre, a little more than a half-mile north of Royal Poinciana Way. The property had at one time been part of a larger estate extending two lots to the east and south to Coral Way.

Olsson said her clients were drawn to the property for several reasons.

“They wanted a big yard, and they wanted to be close to town,” she said. “This property has 165 feet of frontage. The average up there is generally 100 feet.”

Her clients hope to keep at least the front exterior of the house intact when they carry out a major renovation, Olsson said.

Emerald Lane is a prime street, she added. “It’s close to town, there’s (on-street) parking, and it’s so quiet,” she said. “You can’t beat it.”

The Wards have owned another North End home on Atlantic Avenue since 2002, property records show. Charles Ward is a partner at Perella Weinberg Partners, an international asset advisory and management firm with offices in several cities, including New York City.

The Ramsings once owned a Wyoming ranch where they raised Norwegian Fjord horses. Among his development projects, Byron Ramsing co-owned and was instrumental in the development of Old Port Village, which later became Lost Tree Village, the affluent community near North Palm Beach.

The deed for the Emerald Lane house recorded Nov. 10.

*

This just in — Turns out that Brown Harris Stevens agent Carol Digges was on the buyer’s side of negotiations during the recent sale of 167 E. Inlet Drive, reported here last week. Digges won’t discuss the identity of anyone behind Springday LLC, the Missouri limited liability company that paid a recorded $6.6 million for the four-bedroom house at the tip of the island.

The seller was Fite Shavell & Associates agent Adam Jackson, who developed the 2008 house on speculation but had little luck landing a buyer during the recession. Jackson last week also was mum about the buyer’s end of the deal.

That was the case with a Ballinger-award winning house on the South End, which has fallen to the wrecking ball.

Built in 1989, Figulus IV at 20 Blossom Way was a vacation house for the Bolton family. It changed hands in December 2012 as part of a four-property deal totaling nearly $130 million. Chicago hedge-funder Ken Griffin has cleared nearly 8 acres to make way for a new oceanfront home designed by Smith Architectural Group, town records show.

Broker Lawrence Moens of Lawrence A. Moens Associates orchestrated the deal for Figulus IV and the three adjacent beachfront properties a bit south of the Mar-a-Lago Club.

Architect Kenyon C. Bolton III designed Figulus IV, with its Old Florida shingle-style architecture, for his mother, the late Mary Bolton. The house paid homage to the original 17-acre Figulus estate, which was built in 1893. Bolton is descended from the pioneer Bingham family, which owned the original Figulus, and subsequent family houses shared the name.

Bolton also designed another home — in the Mediterranean style — for his mother, on the ocean immediately east of Figulus IV at 30 Blossom Way. The town also gave the green light to its demolition.

In 1991, the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach departed from its tradition of honoring vintage architecture by bestowing its Robert I. Ballinger Award on Figulus IV. The award recognized the architect’s “contribution to the preservation of Palm Beach’s architectural heritage,” according to Palm Beach: An Architectural Legacy, written by the late Polly Earl, the foundation’s first executive director.

Figulus IV may be gone, but it did lay the groundwork, of sorts, for a more permanent legacy: In late 2005, the Preservation Foundation established the Elizabeth L. and John H. Schuler Award. Awarded during the spring, it honors new architecture that reflects the character of local architectural traditions.

About the Author

Popular in Lifestyles

Reader Comments
...

Next Up in

By age 11, violinist Jennifer Koh had performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. At Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music, she studied with such eminent violinists as Jaime Laredo and Felix Galimir, and went on to win an Avery Fisher Career Grant and, in 2016, was named Musical America’s Instrumentalist of the Year. At 41, she has...

Maybe you’ve heard of the Impossible Burger: It looks like a burger, bleeds like a burger and has been a darling with national
nameplate chefs—but it’s made entirely from plant-based foods. And it’s in Palm Beach. Cucina serves its plant-based Impossible Burger without a bun; top, an Impossible Burger image from...

Maybe you’ve heard of the Impossible Burger: It looks like a burger, bleeds like a burger and has been a darling with national
nameplate chefs—but it’s made entirely from plant-based foods. And it’s in Palm Beach. Cucina serves its plant-based Impossible Burger without a bun; top, an Impossible Burger image...

Palm Beach Island Cats
put on their boogie shoes for the annual Meow Ball “Disco In-fur-no” on Jan. 31 at the Beach Club. President David Leavitt welcomed guests and reminded everyone how pivotal their support is to spread the word about the organization and its contributions to local cat colonies. SHINY SHOTS: Cats 6th Annual...

More than two dozen women earlier gathered this month to celebrate Mother Nature with a demonstration about raw baking that included a delicious taste test. The event, sponsored by the Jewish Women’s Circle of Palm Beach, was in honor of the Jewish holiday of Tu B’Shvat, or the new year of the trees — the season in which the earliest...